


All the Birds of Paradise Ain't Got Nothing on You

by sushicorps (Inclinant)



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Crack, Eggsy is his guide, Fluff, Harry is a Nature Photographer, M/M, Model AU, Somewhat a photographer and model au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4625202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inclinant/pseuds/sushicorps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Eggsy, are you trying to court me with a mating dance?”</p><p>“No!...Yes...Maybe? Is it working?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Birds of Paradise Ain't Got Nothing on You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DivineProjectZero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/gifts).



> I really, really hope you enjoy this.

When Chester first gives him the assignment, Harry just stares at the file brief for two beats, then at the Editor-in-Chief of the National Geographic for even longer, and then resigns to the fact that Chester probably isn’t kidding about shipping him off to the heart of New Guinea to hunt down a bird that may not even exist.

It’s only after he touches down in in the tiniest airport that he’s ever seen after a most harrowing ride on an actual propeller plane that he realises that the fact that the bird may or may not exist might not even be the most difficult part of this assignment.

“Hello,  you must be Harry right? My name’s Gary, Gary Unwin, but _uh_ , everyone calls me Eggsy. It’s like a nickname,” The man shoots him a lopsided grin that makes the drooping corners of his eyes gently crinkle up and the wind chooses that moment to tousle his hair and brush the fringe over those warm hazel-green eyes and Harry knows that he is doomed. The way he strides forward and hefts Harry’s bags that are positively exploding with camera gear as if it weighs _nothing_ and the way the tight shirt leaves _nothing_ about the flexing of those muscles to his imagination just confirms the sinking feeling in his stomach.

Then Eggsy pauses, turns around and calls out his name in his rough street accent speckled with flecks of some foreign undertones and Harry wants to run straight back to Siberia even if he has to camp for eight hours in the snow just to take a snapshot of fucking weasel-ly arctic weasels.

He spends a bit too long in the shower of the base camp until the water abruptly runs cold and gives him a rude shock.

Harry has considered death by typhoid and chikungunya and malaria and a dozen other tropical ailments to die from but never once did it occur to him that he might just die from sexual frustration from the silhouette of his guide diving naked into a river with a loud, joyous whoop set against the setting sun painting the sky all the shades of romantic lavender and rose red because the universe hates him.

The...well, _nature_ of nature photography, especially when it came to projects such as these, means that Harry’s stuck for hours on ends in the tiny little outpost amongst the trees that the scientists had set up, camera poised in his hands as he waits and waits for the stupid bird to appear and release him from...this.

_...because **of course** the post has to be big enough for two people but not quite that big enough such that Eggsy’s entire side is lined up with his and he can feel the other’s sharp hips beneath the thin cotton fabric digging into his side, see the sweat beading down his jaw at the height of the sun and humidity at noon, feel every shift of that well-built, toned body when he moves…_

They have been in this goddamn jungle for over two weeks and Harry has long since lost count of the birds they’ve run into (none of them the one that he needs, unfortunately enough) but he’s all too aware of the growing count of pictures of Eggsy he has in his camera. Three hundred and forty six to be exact. Scratch that, make that three hundred and fifty six.

He’d explained away the first hundred shots or so as test shots, just to test the lighting and angle and composition to makes sure that everything was perfect for the shot of the bird when they finally got the sodding thing.

He did not have quite as suitable an explanation for the next hundred shots or so.

Eggsy had even begun to play along, moving from shooting Harry a small grin when he caught him behind the lens of his camera, to making a bunch of increasingly random faces and then a pose or two.

_He had did a stint at modelling before, Eggsy had told him one night as they sat down to have dinner after Harry had brought it up because he did seem awfully natural at it. Nothing big or fancy, just for some small publications or one of those models standing in the background. Unremarkable stuff. He’d quite liked it though, but then he had joined the Marines and got into that accident and everything changed. Still, it was nice to be before a camera again._

However, most of them were candids. There’s one of Eggsy as he hefts up their camping equipment while they packed up to move to the next reported sighting of the elusive bird, arm muscles flexing around the long steel poles that he had slung over his shoulders easily. There’s one of Eggsy reaching up to wipe some beads of sweat from his forehead while the sunlight comes from behind him, the harshness of which should have made it overexposed, but instead, forms a striking silhouette of his figure amongst the bracket of leaves. There’s another of Eggsy pushing through the thick foliage, the criss-crossing leaves of the ferns making patterns out of the shadows they cast on his form...

They have been in this jungle for over two weeks now - _together_ with no one else, spending their days cooped up in little platforms in the trees and their nights listening to the cacophony of noises of nature as they talk late into it. Now, as the sun slowly begins to set, barely visible through the thick canopy of leaves overhead, Eggsy puts down his cannister of water and happily hops on the hammock that Harry’s on, making it shift and slip into a slow, rhythmic swaying.

Harry just continues thumbing through the shots he had taken today and he doesn’t notice Eggsy peering over his shoulder until it’s too late. He nearly bangs their heads together as he suddenly jerks back. All the sudden movements just make the hammock sway even harder and Eggsy makes a small yelp as he lurches forward over Harry’s lap. On his part, Harry just barely manages to draw the camera to his side such that the other wouldn’t hit it, for both their sakes.

Eggsy groans as he pushes himself up from Harry's lap, then squints at the camera screen and shoots back up excitedly, sending the hammock into another round of erratic swaying that nearly threatened to upturn them both.

“Hey! It’s that bird we saw today! The one with the cool mating dance!”

Harry frowns and twists the camera back around to see what’s got the other so excited. It’s a Superb Bird of Paradise, one of those tiny black things with a stripe of blue along its front that turned into some demonic looking thing with beady yellow eyes when it fluffed its wings out and stuck out its tail feathers in its attempt to court a female. Harry had been lucky enough to capture the entire mating dance, which he now cycled through as he tapped rapidly through his photographs all taken in rapid succession. The bird hopped from side to side on the thick branch on his screen, looking like some otherworldly possessed alien space saucer.

“I could do that too,” Eggsy shoots him a wide grin and picks up the dangling ends of his open dark blue shirt, holding it out by his sides and began to stick his head straight out from side to side earnestly.

Harry barely smothers a laugh and can’t quite resist the jibe.

““Eggsy, are you trying to court me with a mating dance?”

To his surprise, the other freezes at his words, _flushes_ and then ducks his head.

“No!...Yes...Maybe?... _Is it working?_ ”

Eggsy looks back up at him and it is only then that Harry takes in how close they are, how there’s barely a handspan between their lips and even though the light is dim coming from the other side of their tiny little camp, he can see the slight red flush on the inside of those pale pink lips…

He moves to lean forward slowly, then gets soundly smacked in the face by a wingful of feathers. The bird stands proudly in the middle of them, fluffing up its long rainbow coloured tail feathers and looking quite proud of itself. There was something about its looks that felt important to Harry, but he couldn’t quite place why...

“Uh...Harry? Is that? _The bird_?”  Eggsy breathes out slowly from where he has frozen in place, not daring to disturb the bird lest it flies off.

“ _Yes Eggsy,_ ” Harry whispers as softly as he could, torn between thanking the bird for firstly, being real and finally appearing after long last such that he could do his job and go home or hating its guts utterly for ruining that moment which was going so well. Nevertheless, he reaches for his camera and switch it on, craning the best he can to take a picture before the bird can fly off…

“Harry, watch out!”  
  
The bird gives an unholy shriek and flies off, dumping feathers all over them as it bats at their faces in an attempt to get away. The hammock swings wildly in the madness of their chaotic movements, before finally flipping over and depositing them in a messy pile on the ground.

Somehow, by some _miracle,_ Harry still manages to get a clear picture of the bird in spite of it all.

They don’t talk about the almost-kiss they’d had the entire way back to the researcher’s camp.

They don't talk about it even as Eggsy sees Harry off to the airport and waves him off from behind the gates.

* * *

“These are fantastic,” Gazelle remarks as she leafs through the photographs scattered all over her desk, then picks up one particular stack. Harry’s not too sure why he included those. They’re all shots, most featuring Eggsy’s side and back amidst the green foliage, and one particularly memorable one: a simple shot of the pale golden light of dawn filtering through the canopy in a misty haze and casting a soft, dreamy filter over his face that lit up his eyes as he looked away.

“I’m glad you agree.”

Gazelle stares at him, looking more like a cheetah right now than her namesake animal, but Harry just smiles benignly back.

“So you’re telling me that…Chester sent you to New Guinea to find some mythical endangered animal and you somehow ended up taking pictures of…” She gestures to all the photographs.

" _Him_ instead.”

Harry just gives up and nods.

“So he fired you.”

“Actually, I quit.

Gazelle looks up at him, arching a perfectly drawn eyebrow.

“He was going to ship me off to China to take pictures of pandas. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I like pandas as much as the next person. They’re… _.technically cute._ But I don’t speak a word of Chinese and I can’t eat spicy food at all-“

“Right. So you... _quit_. After taking over seven hundred photographs of a fine young man... and then _you fucking left him in New Guinea?!_ ”

Gazelle stares at him.

Harry stares back.  
  
She sighs and tosses down the stack of photographs onto the table.

“I can’t use these photographs without a model release form.

Harry continues staring.

Gazelle just looks back at him expectantly, then at his lack of reply, rolls her eyes and levels him a sharp look.

“That needs to be _signed_ , by the _model_.”

“…Oh.”

Gazelle tuts lightly and rises up from her desk to call for her secretary.

“Roxy, I’ll need you to buy one ticket to Jackson International Airport and two tickets back for Mr. Hart here.”

* * *

“If you’re looking for Eggsy, he’s down the street in a pub somewhere I think,” One of the researchers, Jamie or something, says and then is subsequently mobbed by a whole bunch of his fellow researchers who descend upon him in a rapid flurry of terrifyingly long biology terms.

He ends up finding Eggsy in the pub at the very end of the road, slouched over the bar counter and spilling his sorrows to a very unimpressed bartender.

“I mean, he showed up in a fuckin’ suit. A goddamn three piece suit he got tailored for the tropical weather and to go with boots. Who the hell does that?” Eggsy hiccups and downs the rest of the drink in his mug, sinking further down onto the counter as he does so. “I even danced a fucking mating dance for him. A mating dance, mate. Fuck my l-”

He whirls around when Harry taps him, then to Harry’s complete surprise, just squints at him, sniffs and folds his arms.

“I’m drunk. And dreaming, clearly,” Eggsy deadpans and then turns back to shake his glass at the bartender.

“Eggsy…” Harry starts, gripping the young man firmly on the shoulder and turning him around to look at him. This time, Eggsy just whirls around on him, almost tipping off his chair in his haste and anger.

“ _Shut up_ Harry. What do you expect me to do? I can’t do this! Not when you waltz in here in your fucking suit looking all dandy and posh and shit even though it’s the freaking jungle and the humidity’s enough to drive most people bonkers but you’ve always got a witty remark on your tongue and some totally random fact about obscure butterflies in Ecuador and I’d long since fallen so hard for you but then you up and left just like that and _all the birds of paradise ain't got nothing on you okay_ -"

“I have nine hundred and thirty three photographs in my camera right now - seven hundred of them are of you, two hundred of them are of the _fucking trees_ and only one is of that _goddamn bird_ I was supposed to take in the first place!”

The mostly empty glass of beer falls out of Eggsy’s hand as he freezes and he gapes at Harry who’s currently clutching onto the edge of the bar counter, struggling to catch his breath.

As love confessions go, Harry thinks, this one wasn’t all that bad at all.

“Shit,” Eggsy says, twiddling his fingers together. “You could’ve said that sooner.”

There is a long pause as Eggsy takes in his words.

“...Am I at least pretty in the photos?” 

“You certainly are.” 

Eggsy still seems to be coming to terms with everything. He frowns intently at his empty glass even as Harry slides onto the seat next to him and gestures for a drink. No, make that three.

“So...What happens now?”

“What happens now, Eggsy, is that I am going to finish this lovely pint here and then we are going to see just how lovely you can look in the scenes that I’m already imagining for you.”

* * *

It turns out Harry isn’t only good at taking photographs of animals, especially not when he has such a handsome and _remarkably flexible_ model to work with. So it’s a bit of a niche market he’s working in right now, but he doesn’t really mind and neither does Eggsy. Besides, he always keeps the best photographs for the two of them, a small gallery that’s growing rapidly as he adds a new photograph every other night.


End file.
